New health care plan, but with the same old problems

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“Let’s just say it was welcomed,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said when asked whether Obama’s involvement was overdue.

But Republicans weren’t impressed with the offer, issuing uniformly negative statements. They called it more of the same drafted-behind-closed-doors policy that Americans dislike and continued to push for Democrats to start with a blank slate — a demand Obama has emphatically rejected.

“Americans want the administration to scrap its massive government scheme in favor of an incremental approach to health care reform,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “Unfortunately, the White House still seems unwilling to do the one thing Americans want most. It’s still clinging to a massive bill that Americans have overwhelmingly rejected, again and again, for months.

The White House kept Obama’s plan under wraps until Monday, and knowing this, party leaders in the House agreed last week not to weigh in immediately on the plan once it was unveiled, preferring instead to hear from their rank and file and field whatever concerns members had, leadership aides said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement Monday morning to say the plan “contains positive elements from the House- and Senate-passed bills.” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said, “It could be the basis for a compromise. We’re not there yet. ... We’ll see what the Republicans have to offer.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said he was pleased to see that the bill mirrors much in the Senate version of reform. “It’s close. I mean, this is a democracy — you have 535 members of Congress, plus a president, and we hope to put these provisions together. I’m pleased,” Baucus said. “We will get health care reform passed this year.”

But for all the talk of the details in Obama’s bill, it’s politics, not policy, that has been the biggest sticking point for Democrats of late.

Since losing the Massachusetts Senate election, Democrats have struggled with finding a legislative path to move forward in the House and Senate.

In the Senate, they are moving toward using reconciliation, a parliamentary maneuver that allows legislation to be passed with a simple majority. But Democrats remain skittish about using that tool, as Republicans have cast it as a shortcut, even though they, too, have used it to pass legislation.

The White House went further Monday than it has before in signaling support for reconciliation. Pfeiffer said the president believes the bill should receive an up-or-down vote.

They should be....we are talking about something that will impact every single American life. This country is center right. They NEED both parties input on this healthcare bill or 1/2 the public won't trust it AT ALL....it will always be looked at as a "power grab" by the left.

This administration should just be forthright with the American people - pure and simple - their plan is, and has been all along, to do income redistribution - and they are masking it through the nationalization of all private enterprises and by taxing people to death who make a certain level of income - and most Americans today who are at that certain level of income have gotten their ALL ON THEIR OWN - through their blood, sweat, toil and tears, without governmental handouts and yet, they are the very ones being "labeled", "punished" for enjoying the fruits of their very long, hard and laborious efforts.

What part of NO do they not understand? What is so hard for them to comprehend the "N" or the "O"? Of course if they do force it thru the backlash will be worse than a armed rush on the capitol. The whole issue can be killed next year by the new congress if they simply refuse to fund this abortion.

If there was an oscar for saying no in the most creative ways, these republicans would win it every single day. They did not know the word existed all the while the earlier president spent like a drunken sailor. Losers.

Where's the tax cuts that will create jobsOBAMA, PELOSI, REID, DEMOCRATS? All you care about is Government takeover of our private freedoms hijacking our country, our taxes dollars and the office you now sit in.

2010 and 2012 can't come soon enough.

This has got to be one of the worst Administations in the history of the United States. I can't wait till we get some real leaders in this office. What a discrace and travisty to our great nation!

here come the spewing conservative's backlash: socialist! Communist! Teleprompter! ObamaCare! Brith Certificate! Majority of Americans (translation: majority of "Real Americans") don't want the government to takeover my Medicare! Let's see, what else, oh, Obama picture looking like the Joker, racists comments, big plot to take over our lives or something, Democrat congress trembling about November, Marxist liberal Harry Reid is toast...Libdumbs... did I miss anything? Oh, Dems are nervous about Sarah Palin, shaking in their boots etc, tea party take back America, revolution, bitter, angry, roar, don't tread on me or tax me, re-write history and say Abe Lincoln was a conservative, not a liberal (he would be called a RINO today of course, think about which states were mad at him) I know there had got to be more, please, help me out here...

"The White House plan adopts the broad framework of the House and Senate bills, which require individuals to purchase insurance, provide subsidies for lower-income Americans to buy coverage and prohibit insurers from refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions." - Politico

Of these three points which one would you think racks up to almost 1 TRILLION? You guessed it, subsidies to lower-income Americans. Whose going to pay for it? You guessed it, middle class Americans. That's assuming there is a middle class after the Demorats have done their thing.

Three days before the highly publicized health care mmit, billed by President Obama and Democrats as an opportunity for bipartisan negotiations regarding the provisions of a potential health care overhaul, the White House signaled its intent to move forward with a $950 billion dollar Democrats-only bill that can garner, at most, a bare 51 vote majority in the United States Senate. Indeed, eight Democratic Senators (including Lieberman) have already gone on record opposing the use of reconciliation to ram through the Obamacare package. Despite Obama’s prior pledges of bipartisan negotiations with the GOP and this morning’s bipartisan rhetoric from the White House, the fact is that the only bipartisanship associated with health care reform is the bipartisan opposition in the House to Obamacare (39 Democratic “no” votes) and the bipartisan opposition to the use of reconciliation to pass Obamacare through the Senate.

The substantive content of this morning’s latest White House version of Obamacare is essentially the same plan negotiated between the President, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the days leading up to Republican Scott Brown’s January 2010 election to the Senate from liberal Massachusetts and the White House roadmap contemplates the use of the reconciliation process in the Senate so as to avoid the need for a 60 vote majority:

“This is our take on the best way to merge the House and Senate bills,” a senior White House official told ABC News. The official said the proposal was “informed by our conversations from negotiations” before Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was elected, thus depriving Democrats of their 60-vote supermajority, as well as from subsequent discussions.

“We thought it would be a more productive meeting if we brought one consolidated plan to use as jumping-off point,” the official said. “We hope the Republicans do the same.”

By posting their proposals in such a form, White House officials are providing a roadmap for how they think they can best pass health care reform in the new post-Massachusetts Senate race reality: have the House pass the Senate bill, then use reconciliation rules requiring only a majority Senate vote to pass the “fix” to make the bill more palatable.

Accordingly, it appears that the Obama Administration has settled on pursing the use of the Senate reconciliation process, instead of normal order which would require a 60 vote majority, to pass the most far-reaching reform of the health care system in our nation’s history. Indeed, the “package is designed to help us [use reconciliation] if the Republican party decides to filibuster health care reform,” stated White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer.

The new Obamacare policy summary and the conference call with reporters strongly indicate that little, if any, substantive discussions will occur at Thursday’s health care summit as the Democrats have now settled on the use of reconciliation as the pathway to final passage of Obamacare. The GOP’s incremental ideas such as allowing the purchase of insurance across state lines, significant tort reform and the use of risk pools for uninsurable Americans with preexisting conditions are nowhere to be found in this morning’s announcement nor in the present Democratic bills in the Senate and House and are essentially inconsistent with the comprehensive, government-centered, Democratic health care reform plans. Furthermore, in a move apparently designed to paint the GOP as pro-insurance, Obama also proposed substantial new federal price controls over the cost of health insurance as part of this morning’s summary.

The above-described White House posture this morning stands in stark contrast to their posture just two weeks ago when the idea of a health care summit was first pitched by President Obama. At that time, Obama promised to engage in substantive negotiations with the GOP on all parts of health care reform plan during the summit:

“I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward” Mr. Obama said in the interview from the White House Library.

The 2/8/2010 NYT piece quoted above notes that it “remained an open question whether the meeting could lead to real consensus on health care, or whether it would serve only to allow Democrats to frame a political argument against the Republicans going into the midterm campaign.” Considering this morning’s developments, and the clearly stated intent to move forward with reconciliation passage of the intra-Democrat negotiated Obamacare, there no longer remains a “open question” and instead Obama intends the coming summit to “serve only to allow Democrats to frame a political argument against the Republicans going into the midterm campaign.”